Scandal and survival in nineteenth-century Scotland : the life of Jane Cumming / Frances B. Singh.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Singh, Frances B., 1947- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cumming, Jane, 1795 or 1796-1844.

Cumming, Jane.

Multiracial women--Scotland--Biography.

Multiracial women.

Multiracial women--Scotland--Social conditions--History--19th century.

Trials (Libel)--Scotland--History--19th century.

Trials (Libel).

Divorced women--Scotland--Social conditions--19th century.

Divorced women.

Social conditions.

History.

Scotland--Social conditions--19th century.

Scotland.

Divorced women--Social conditions.

Genre:

History.

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xxxviii, 318 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Rochester, NY : University of Rochester Press, 2020.

Summary:

"Her Scottish father put her in an institution in Calcutta when she was small. Guilt made her Highland gentry grandfather send for her, but he considered her an encumbrance and boarded her in Elgin. When she was an adolescent, her grandmother enrolled her in an Edinburgh boarding school where she developed a crush on one teacher and received harsh rebukes from the other. Brushed off by the former and chastised by the latter, she retaliated by alleging that they were sexually intimate. The teachers sued for libel; in the case that ensued, she was seen through sexist and racist lenses, constructed as an Other. While the case was still going on, she was married to a Presbyterian minister. If the idea was that he would tame her and make her conformable as other household Janes, the plan failed. He turned out to be a womanizer and Jane took revenge on him by reporting his unchaste behavior to his fellow ministers. Later she made a laughingstock of him by joining another church. Posthumously, she became a mean show-stopping character in a play by Lillian Hellman. Such was the life of Jane Cumming, the biracial woman whose recovered story is the subject of this biography. Spanning three continents and more than two centuries and based on archival research, this offers a sympathetic portrait of the protagonist, seeing her as a resilient figure who, when threatened by figures of authority, took arms against her sea of troubles so as to oppose and end them"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Placing Jane

Educating Jane (1)

Educating Jane (2)

Jane and the Lords of the Law (1)

Jane and the Lords of the Law (2)

Jane and William Tulloch

Jane, posthumously

Conclusion: Assessing Jane.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781580469555

1580469558

OCLC:

1110436958